This book focusses on the interaction between different kinds of violence and radicalization. Current research criticizes linear models of radicalization and assumes that individuals are involved in radical actions even without extremist preferences. In recent years, the research on radicalization and the use of violence has increasingly been focused on this phenomenon of individual radicalization. However, radicalization is a manifold phenomenon on various levels and exists in miscellaneous variations. The book provides an impetus for analysing social situations that contain the potential for the emergence of conflict. This is done through new outlooks on the role of emotions, the influence of narratives and representations, the connection between (non)violence and emancipation and, lastly, new approaches and perspectives on deradicalization.

The fifteen chapters in this volume of Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance discuss a number of issues researchers in the fields of sociology, criminology, and criminal justice theorize, conceptualize, and measure racialization and counter-radicalization.

Radicalization, Terrorism, and Conflict is a collection of scholarly works, authored by international researchers and leading thinkers, addressing contemporary, history-making issues in international security and terrorism from an interdisciplinary perspective. Contributors to this edited volume represent global perspectives, ideas, analysis, and research. Radicalization, Terrorism, and Conflict transmits relevant findings, theory, and policy ideas for scholars of security and terrorism studies, for policy makers, and to the general public who are interested in keeping up with this global area of concern. It provides a jumping-off point for conversation and collaboration that can lead to new knowledge and broader understanding. As an interdisciplinary collection of manuscripts, this book integrates and synthesizes theory, research, and public policy analysis in an effort to solve the complex questions and problems presented by this topic. Recognition of the need to approach the problems of radicalization, terrorism, and interpersonal conflict from an interdisciplinary perspective is gaining strength within academic settings, policy institutes, and global conferences. Unlike most recent edited books on the subject that are on the market at this time, Radicalization, Terrorism, and Conflict provides an interdisciplinary approach to understanding related current issues. This approach encourages a broader perspective and thought process, trans-discipline and global collaboration and cooperation, and an integrated synthesis of knowledge. Radicalization, Terrorism, and Conflict opens with an analysis of the ongoing phenomenon of the Arab Spring. In Section 1, contributors look at how players in the theatres of local and international terror become radicalized. Section 2 analyzes how terrorism becomes manifest in the global theatre and how governments and their actors attempt to prevent it. Section 3 presents research to bring understanding to the actors’ behavior and provide settings for future collaboration in understanding these phenomena.

Dynamics of Political Violence examines how violence emerges and develops from episodes of contentious politics. By considering a wide range of empirical cases, such as anarchist movements, ethno-nationalist and left-wing militancy in Europe, contemporary Islamist violence, and insurgencies in South Africa and Latin America, this pathbreaking volume of research identifies the forces that shape radicalization and violent escalation. It also contributes to the process-and-mechanism-based models of contentious politics that have been developing over the past decade in both sociology and political science. Chapters of original research emphasize how the processes of radicalization and violence are open-ended, interactive, and context dependent. They offer detailed empirical accounts as well as comprehensive and systematic analyses of the dynamics leading to violent episodes. Specifically, the chapters converge around four dynamic processes that are shown to be especially germane to radicalization and violence: dynamics of movement-state interaction; dynamics of intra-movement competition; dynamics of meaning formation and transformation; and dynamics of diffusion.

Radicalization is a major challenge of contemporary global security. It conjures up images of violent ideologies, “homegrown” terrorists and jihad in both the academic sphere and among security and defense experts. While the first instances of religious radicalization were initially limited to second-generation Muslim immigrants, significant changes are currently impacting this phenomenon. Technology is said to amplify the dissemination of radicalism, though there remains uncertainty as to the exact weight of technology on radical behaviors. Moreover, far from being restricted to young men of Muslim heritage suffering from a feeling of social relegation, radicalism concerns a significant number of converted Muslims, women and more heterogeneous profiles (social, academic and geographic), as well as individuals that give the appearance of being fully integrated in the host society. These new and striking dynamics require innovative conceptual lenses. Radicalization in Theory and Practice identifies the mechanisms that explicitly link radical religious beliefs and radical actions. It describes its nature, singles out the mechanisms that enable radicalism to produce its effects, and develops a conceptual architecture to help scholars and policy-makers to address and evaluate radicalism—or what often passes as such. A variety of empirical chapters fed by first-hand data probe the relevance of theoretical perspectives that shape radicalization studies. By giving a prominent role to first-hand empirical investigations, the authors create a new framework of analysis from the ground up. This book enhances the quality of theorizing in this area, consolidates the quality of methodological enquiries, and articulates security studies insights with broader theoretical debates in different fields including sociology, social psychology, economics, and religious studies.

Why is it that some social movements engaged in contentious politics experience radicalization whereas others do not? The Dynamics of Radicalization offers an innovative reply by investigating how and when social movement organizations switch from a nonviolent mode of contention to a violent one. Moving beyond existing explanations that posit aggressive motivations, grievances or violence-prone ideologies, this book demonstrates how these factors gain and lose salience in the context of relational dynamics among various parties and actors involved in episodes of contention. Drawing on a comparative historical analysis of al-Qaeda, the Red Brigades, the Cypriot EOKA, the authors develop a relational, mechanism-based theory that advances our understanding of political violence in several important ways by identifying turning points in the radicalization process, similar mechanisms at work across each case, and the factors that drive or impede radicalization. The Dynamics of Radicalization offers a counterpoint to mainstream works on political violence, which often presume that political violence and terrorism is rooted in qualities intrinsic to or developed by groups considered to be radical.

In this ground-breaking and important book, Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko identify twelve mechanisms of political radicalization that can move individuals, groups, and the masses to increased sympathy and support for political violence, drawing on wide-ranging case histories to show striking parallels between 1800s anti-czarist terrorism, 1970s anti-war terrorism, and 21st century jihadist terrorism. In the context of the Islamic State's worldwide effort to radicalize moderate Muslims for jihad, they advance a model that differentiates radicalization in opinion from radicalization in action, and suggests different strategies for countering these different forms of radicalization. Their controversial conclusion is that the same mechanisms are at work in radicalizing both terrorists and states targeted by terrorists. The implications of this conclusion are as relevant for policy makers and security officers as for citizens facing terrorist threats.